Reluctant Adept: Book Three of A Clairvoyant's Complicated Life (14 page)

I folded my arms. "Like I said, I was running on autopilot bringing us here. You're right, it makes more sense to walk to the building veiled. At that point, I can sidestep us through the ward."

Tíereachán dismissed this with a sibilant snort. "It is well within your skills to find our destination, dark and …
wonky
view or not."

I almost laughed. "Yeah? With what? My magic flashlight?"

"One of these days, you will cease underestimating yourself," he admonished. "
Think.
How did you separate me from my master?"

"I pushed you
here
—to the higher plane," I replied, although I didn't see how his rescue from Azazel had anything to do with finding our way through the Stygian, obfuscated view.

"Yet you remained behind, in the material one."

I frowned at the memory. Yes, I'd done it, but the act had terrified me. At the time, I wasn't sure I could send him to the higher realm without going along with him. I'd been afraid of pushing him too far, perhaps even losing him to the void.

"Yeah, " I drew out the word, leaving it hanging.
So?

"When it came time, what did you do to retrieve me?"

"I pushed my magic into the higher plane and searched for you."

"Exactly," he said, tipping his head back and gazing down at me. "Tell me how."

"I don't know. I, uh … made my magic act like … fingers." Talking about how I internalized my gifts always sounded lame. I'd been asked countless times how my clairvoyance worked, usually by normals who had no clue about magic. I hated putting it into words. It always came off so clichéd. Evidently, describing my new abilities was no different.

"Tell me about these …
fingers
." Predictably, he looked nonplussed. "Where does the power come from?"

"From my center, my core. You know, the usual." I shrugged, pulling my arms tighter to my stomach. "It's nothing special, just my TK."

"TK … " His head jerked to an inquisitive angle. "
Telekinesis
?"

Tíereachán never blurted things. He was one of the most confident, self-possessed individuals I'd ever met. I shifted my feet, glancing at Fisk who appeared almost as riveted. "Well … yeah," I replied, frowning at his astonishment. "Couldn't you tell? How else did you think I wrapped us up to come here?"

"I've been grasped by telekinesis, many times," Fisk said. "Your magic feels different. More … invasive."

What the heck did that mean? Was the difference because of the unnatural way I'd acquired my additional gifts? All three—my telekinesis, cryokinesis, and pyrokinesis—had been unknowingly conferred to me when I made the mistake of reading the remains of three unidentified murder victims. My clairvoyance triggered the remnants of a nasty spell, one that the Circle Murderer had used to rip the psychic ability from each victim. Thanks to that interaction, I'd ended up with each victim's gift.

My TK had come from Jason, a type-three telekinetic whose magic worked on both organic and non-organic objects. As far as I knew, there wasn't anything unusual about Jason or his TK, and I had no reason to think his gift had mutated when I'd inherited it.

No. More likely, Fisk's perceived difference had to do with the methodical way I 'learned' his body in order to memorize his resonance. It had obviously made him uncomfortable. I shouldn't have snarked about leaving important bits behind when we sidestepped. No wonder he'd responded the way he did.

"That's how you found me?" Tíereachán asked, his brows spiking upward. "You sent these telekinetic
fingers
into the higher plane and … felt around for me?"

I was dangerously close to feeling like a candidate for
Oddities
show regular, but I shrugged, managing to feign nonchalance. "Yeah."

"And you knew it was me?"

I laughed. "Who else would it have been?"

"Ah. So you simply grabbed the first thing you found."

I rolled my eyes. "Of course not. I knew it was you."

"How?"

Jeez.
What was this? A job interview? "Your resonance—I know how it feels; what your body, your soul, sounds like; how you vibrate." Heat rushed to my cheeks. "It's hard to explain."

I half expected him to leer at me, but instead, his eyes lit up. "Perhaps your abilities are similar to my mother's after all. She speaks in the same terms about places." He considered me. "Do you know Michael's resonance? He accompanied you when you sidestepped Wade's ward, did he not?"

I hesitated, struggling to keep up with his unexpected segues. "Uh, yeah. He did."

"I had thought to instruct you in the plagency of a place and how to use it as a beacon, but this will serve."

Plagency?
Leave it to the sidhe to use words I'd never heard uttered in mainstream conversation. He couldn't have said 'resonance' like everyone else?

He nodded briskly. "Michael is in his building. Seek him out and take us there."

I opened my mouth to set the bossy bastard straight. I knew all about the
resonances
of places. How the heck did he think I sidestepped? My building's djinn had deposited me here in the higher dimension, last month, when I'd needed a private moment with Michael. The feel of this place had sung to me, the tune seeping into my bones like a top ten favorite, one that, once remembered, had stuck fast in my mind. And the Earth with its beautiful, discordant, vibrant symphony … it had called me home more than once.

I knew about
plagency,
and, besides, I wasn't a damned taxi to be ordered about! I fumed but snapped my mouth shut, just short of issuing an irritated retort. Tíereachán was simply … being Tíereachán. And he
had
pointed out something that should have been obvious to me from the start. I could sidestep my magic and use it to navigate.
Duh.

Saying nothing, I closed my eyes and thought about Earth, her complex, tumultuous arrangement of melodies that seemed to both fight and jive, grate and please, thousands of harmonies interlaced to form the brilliance of life that was nothing short of miraculous. It was
home
, familiar and comforting and easy to find, as though the damp street, two blocks from the telepath's building, was a warm hearth that beckoned me. Careful to keep myself firmly rooted in the higher plane, I slid my magic toward that warmth and almost gasped at the physical sensations of the sidewalk, neighboring tree, and Fisk's sedan parked at the nearby curb.

Jeez Louise. It worked!

As I wound my magic's tendrils experimentally through the nearby foliage, Earth's complex symphony rippled in my mind as notes came and went in a subtle yet marked permutation that changed with each minuscule movement.

"Huh," I mumbled. "Would you look at that?"

Each location possessed a unique signature, in the same way each cell in my body contributed to the whole of my being's resonance.

Until now, I hadn't realized when I sidestepped, I zeroed in on the loudest melody of my destination's overarching song and allowed it to guide me. Sort of like standing out on a street lined with an infinite number of houses and choosing to enter the dwelling that blared music the loudest. With all the houses playing music at the same volume, the loudest and most distinguishable music emanated from the closest doorway. This was why, when I sidestepped, I shifted to the target plane without changing my relative location. To sidestep somewhere else, I was willing to bet I needed to seek out the specific melody being played by whatever 'house' I wanted to enter, and then … go there instead.

I reeled at the possibilities. If I memorized the
plagency
of a place, knew it by heart in the same way I
knew
Tíereachán's resonance, I could jump to that location instead of where I'd been standing seconds prior. I could …
teleport
?

No. That couldn't be right …

Could it?

I think I stopped breathing for a second or two as I marveled at the idea.

"Not much to look at. Have you located Michael?" Tíereachán asked, breaking my dumbfounded reverie.

"Mmm?" I opened my eyes, while still keeping metaphysical tabs on the Earth-side street we'd recently vacated. "Oh, no. Just noticing what you meant about the plagency thing," I replied, chagrined. I'd been prickly with him—even if it
had
been confined to my thoughts—and he hadn't deserved it. Evidently, Fisk's ongoing disregard had made me hypersensitive to anyone who called attention to my ignorance. Not a healthy attitude if I wanted (and needed) to learn about my burgeoning abilities.

Sighing at this bit of introspection, I admitted, "I'm not sure how to use it to navigate, though. For now, I think we're safer if I use my TK like a white cane." I tilted my head to the side, considering him. "But if you lend me some of your focus, or whatever it is you sidhe do to share power, I might be able to find Michael in one go, instead of feeling around like a blind woman."

Tíereachán blinked, his shock plain despite the meager lighting.

"
Jesus
," Fisk bit out. "Why don't you ask the guy to fuck you without a condom, too, while you're at it?"

I recoiled, staggering two steps backward, as much due to Fisk's savage disgust as the vulgar comment itself.

As I stared stupidly at Fisk, speechless and agog, something blurred past my peripheral vision, too quick to be followed. If it hadn't been for Fisk's flinch, I might have attributed it to a shadow, possibly from a car passing on the street in the material plane. However, before I could spare it a second thought, Fisk's shroud slammed into place, instantly cutting me off from his resonance. Once again, I found myself scrambling to absorb the backlash without spewing magic like a toddler, which proved to be considerably easier when I wasn't stuffed to overflowing to begin with.

"What the—?" The rest of my furious response died in my throat when I spied a fine, vertical line of red that welled up through the smooth, fair skin of Fisk's face.

As his expression drew down into a hard, angry grimace, Fisk touched his fingertips to the stark crease at the center of his left cheek, smearing the perfect ruby line and rendering his fingers and cheek bloody. I'd seen this type of injury before—all over the Circle Murderer's body as he died a slow, painful death. This was the result of Tíereachán's offensive magic. He'd flayed a knife-thin strip of skin from Fisk's cheek!

Without any thought spared to the possibility of danger, I flew to stand between the two men, my backside a few inches from Fisk.

"What do you think you're
doing
?" I demanded, glaring at Tíereachán, my voice bordering on shrill.

Tíereachán ignored me, staring daggers over my head at his target. "I have warned you more than once about your disrespect. No doubt this will improve your disposition."

Anger burned away my fear, heating my cheeks and neck. I stalked into Tíereachán's personal space and got right into his face, or as close as I could manage considering our height difference. "Have you lost your mind?" I snapped and then jerked my arm behind me, leveling an accusing finger toward Fisk's face. "
That
is not how friends deal with personality conflicts."

"No," he snarled, never taking his eyes from the part-sidhe behind me. "It's how a
flaith
deals with disobedient half-blood
scolacas
, who allow resentment to poison their thoughts and rule their actions. One who will suffer painfully at my hands if he permits his petty emotions to interfere with his duty." Tíereachán's blue eyes were positively glacial. He narrowed them to slits. "This was but a
small
reminder."

I shivered at the menace in his tone, knowing well how much worse a more demonstrable reminder could be. His gruesome methods still haunted my dreams, even though, when he'd dispatched the Circle Murderer amid a sea of blood and gore, he'd saved me from becoming the killer's fifth victim.

I jumped at the unexpected contact of Fisk nudging my back, belatedly aware that I'd almost run into him. Over my shoulder, I caught his inquisitive gaze as he examined me. Since Fisk tended to border on dismissive whenever I was around, the intensity of his attention made me want to squirm. I might have sidled away if I hadn't been worried about Fisk and Tíereachán coming to further blows.

Tíereachán, however, was no longer paying Fisk any mind. He regarded me with a focus that rivaled Fisk's in its fervor, although instead of puzzlement, his eyes sparkled with defiance. They dared me to argue, which had the predictable effect. Righteous anger flared through me, as satisfying as it was fortifying, drawing me up and squaring my shoulders like a puppeteer had pulled my strings.

If he assumed I'd sit back and let him brutalize Fisk, he obviously didn't know me at all.

"I don't care if you're freaking God Almighty," I ground out. "If you do anything like this again, I … I'll …"

Do what? Hurt him? Kill him?
He'd know those were empty threats. If I didn't endorse hurting people who criticized or vilified me, I certainly wasn't going to do something horrible to someone I considered a friend. And, as unwise as it seemed at the moment, I cared about Tíereachán. I valued our friendship, which was why his physical assault on Fisk bothered me so much. It was behavior that befitted Paimon the demon, not Tíereachán the sidhe.

In the weeks since freeing him from Azazel's grasp, I hadn't seen him do anything remotely nefarious, much less aggressive. Nothing prompted me to believe he'd been corrupted by his millennia of demon enslavement.

That is … until now.

He raised his eyebrows, waiting, eyes taunting, and, perhaps, behind that superior veneer of his, looking uneasy. Although, the uneasy part might have been a projection of what I desperately wanted to see.

I frowned at him. "I won't be a party to that," I said, softer than I'd intended. I narrowed my eyes and added some fire. "No—not just that. I won't tolerate it. If this is something you're in the habit of doing, you won't be a part of my life. I'll cut you out. Period. Even if it means not training with your mother."